Pacific Rim a ‘Beautiful Poem to Giant Monsters,’ del Toro Says

Guillermo del Toro is one busy guy. In addition to directing movies, he also just wrapped his trio of Strain vampire novels, and continues to work on the video game inSane. Wired talked to the man behind the upcoming Pacific Rim, mostly about his most recent novel The Night Eternal, but he also provided a brief update on the giant-monster movie.

“We start shooting next Monday [Eds. note: Nov. 14] on Pacific Rim, which is a gigantic production for Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros,” del Toro said. “We are wrapping production on a smaller, very powerful horror film called Mama, which I am producing. Chuck and I are working on a series of books that I can’t talk too much about. But we started on that about two weeks ago. I’m still working on animation at DreamWorks. I’m keeping myself pretty busy.”

The director went on to praise the cast, which we now know includes the star of his Hellboy movies, Ron Perlman. “We are working with actors that I absolutely adore,” he said. “Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman. It’s really, it’s a very, very beautiful poem to giant monsters. Giant monsters versus giant robots. Twenty-five-story-high robots beating the crap out of 25-story-high monsters. We’re trying to create a world in which the characters are real and how it would affect our world politically, how it would affect the landscape if creatures like this really came out of the sea, etc.”

The director declined to comment on an adaptation of Slaughterhouse 5, not wanting to talk about projects no longer in development. He did say that The Hulk TV screenplay and The Haunted Mansion at Disney were still in the works. On the subject of inSane, Del Toro said work is running along smoothly, but it’s a lot more complicated from a script and technological standpoint. Surely, anything he’s involved in will sport a classical creepy newness found in films like Pan’s Labyrinth.